The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 15C. Scribner's sons, 1895 |
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Alick American Anstruther Easter Arethusa artist asked Barbizon began Calistoga cañon Cellardyke Cernay Charles of Orleans Châtillon-sur-Loing Circassia colour Commissary companion dark deck Devonian door emigrant English face Fair Isle fancy fellow fellow-passengers Fontainebleau forest gentleman gone Gretz hand Hanson heard heart heaven hills hour human Indian Jones Kelmar Lake County land least live look Maréchal-des-logis Mexican mind Monterey morning Mount Saint Helena mountain Napa Valley nature never night once Pacific painter passed passengers perhaps plain platform pleasant pleasure poor road round Rufe scarce scene Schramberger seemed seen ship side Silverado steerage stood story stowaway strange streets surprised talk taste thing thought tion Toano told Toll House town train trees turn valley voice walk whole wind woods word young
Popular passages
Page 298 - To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less/ to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence,' to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
Page 152 - A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull, For writing treason, and for writing dull: To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.
Page 305 - A late lark twitters from the quiet skies ; And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace. ' The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine, and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night — Night, with her train of stars And her great gift of...
Page 237 - ... a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid.
Page 233 - ... ever with an eye cast backward on the march of the tide and the menaced line of your retreat. And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eating in the open air: digging perhaps a house under the margin of the links, kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and cooking apples there — if they were truly apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant must have played us off with some inferior and quite local fruit, capable of resolving, in the...
Page 286 - ... for a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask too much. Our religions and moralities have been trimmed...
Page 287 - This stuff, when not purified by the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient...
Page 287 - Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness lies; science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is no habitable city for the mind of man. But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it us. We behold space sown with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the shards and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some rotting, like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. All of these we take to be made of something we call matter...
Page 219 - I loved the art of words and the appearances of life; and "travellers" and "headers" and "rubble" and "polished Ashlar" and "pierres perdues" and even the thrilling question of the "string-course", interested me only (if they interested me at all) as properties for some possible romance or as words to add to my vocabulary.
Page 382 - But to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it...